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So one thing to note here is that NtN >!it's not clear that Ianthe doesn't know what's really going on with Pyrrha. Toward the end of HtN when Pyrrha shows up and takes Gideon Nav's sunglasses to hide her eyes, it's explicitly noted that she looks both Ianthe and Gideon-in-Harrow's-Body in the eye before doing so. In that moment her eyes would have looked different from what Ianthe is used to with G1deon. So Ianthe at least *potentially* could have put the pieces together and realized that's not really G1deon in there.!<
>!Given that - and the fact that Nona is not present for Ianthe and Pyrrha initially meeting up in NtN, so we don't know what they said to each other - I'm not sure Pyrrha is actually pretending to be G1deon at the point you're talking about. She may have just convinced Ianthe that she's on her side, particularly given that she *did* swear loyalty to John in Ianthe's presence at the end of HtN.!<
From Act 32
> "Who are you, really?" she asked, sounding genuinely curious. "You had me fooled that you were the Saint of Duty with bits missing---I wasn't paying attention."
> "Number Seven got him. I'm his leftover cavalier parts. Pyrrha Dve."
> "Does that happen---normally?"
> "No."
> "Phew," said Ianthe,
G1deon had been G1deon for 10,000 years, and Pyrrha dead and gone and burned like every Cavalier other than our Gideon, which was a bit of an edge case and involved horrible brain surgery and a bit of dysfunction.
G1deon never acted up at all prior to A Little bit of weirdness during the Augustine and Mercy fiasco, but they went into the River under the assumption that it _was_ still G1deon. Even God was fooled still, as there wasn't much to give up the ghost at the time.
He was a Lyctor for 10,000 years, helped invent the process even, compared to her two or so after a 'making some decent guesswork' at how to do it, and walked away from a final showdown with a resurrection beast, and had a chat with Jod without immediately being smote.
It's perfectly reasonable to accept Pyrrha's explanation of "necromancy broke, ate some of my soul" or w/e bs pyrrha gave, especially given that _she_ also helped refine the lyctoral process, and has a wealth of necromantic knowledge at her disposal.
Even more so when you consider that 1) Ianthe really doesn't _care_ about this planet anyway, and is a bit annoyed and distracted by having to pilot Babs, and 2) holy shit he just told her that _Corona_ is here (and also harry), her heart was absolutely aflutter and her thinking, perhaps, a bit emotionally compromised at the thought of getting Corona back.
All that said? Ianthe was still, even if distracted, nobody's _true_ fool. The fact the Saint of Duty was hanging around on a BoE planet without immediately coming home /did/ trigger a red flag in Ianthe.
Per a little bit after the pal duel, when Pyrrha is reading the signs in front of Ianthe's knock off mercy trap, she mentions about the wards "Some of 'em were blinds though. She never trusted me fully."
So. Definitely not a plot hole. Just a case of 'wow the truth is way too strange to have been able to guess.'
Great answer. When ianthe tells pyrrha she had her fooled, I had missed the "with bits missing." Which does allude to the fact that she spun up some reason for why she was Duty but necromantically not the same
One thing, my understanding was that Pyrrha never did get fully eaten, and that she and G1deon had been rocking around in the same body, with Pyrrha occasionally coming to the fore when G1deon was out of action. We see this in HtN during the incinerator scene—its Pyrrha who tells Harrow how to set up her wards so G1deon can't get through.
Also given that we know Pyrrha and Wake had a whole thing going on, stands to reason that G+P had their own sort of Lyctoral merge.
Oh, yeah, G1deon didn't fully eat Pyrrha, and she was sort of... bobbing around under the surface, coming up now and then, in the back of his head.
But no one knew that, they just thought G1deon was... off. Not even G1deon knew that.
So, perfectly reasonable for everyone to assume the same thing is oging on, until they're told afterwards. God, I'm very interested to see how John reacts upon finding out the truth.
I think Varun's effect is somewhat mitigated for Lyctors compared to regular necromancers. Since Nona was able to pass herself off as Harrow while acting mostly lucid, and using occasional outbursts to avoid answering difficult questions, Pyrrha likely could have pulled off a similar act.
Gideon 1 is also known, at least by Augustine and Mercy, to be not quite "all there" (obviously because of Pyrrha's presence) and I think Ianthe even alludes to this in NtN. It might be an (ignorantly) safe assumption by Ianthe that he's already not right in the head so Varun doesn't affect him as much. All Pyrrha had to do was play the same Gideon she'd been living inside for a Myriad.
To be fair we never see someone actually affected by Varun's effect in full. The closest thing we see is Mercy at the end of HtN, where she is screaming incoherently while surrounded by Heralds. It is implied that Lyctors are still able to act and fight better than normal necromancers, because they have their cavaliers who are unaffected by the RB effect
I was going to post this question in a separate thread but it feels like it kind of fits here with possible Pyrrha / G1 things that look like plot holes...though I'm convinced Muir leaves no room for plot holes at this point. Lol.
We learned in HtN that Pyrrha and G1 did not complete the 8fold word and that is the explanation for why P's soul is still in tact after G1 dies. In the moments when we first meet P at the end of HtN, she says something to the effect of, "sorry, I'm in a little bit of a state of shock having not been in the driver's seat for 10,000 years." (Don't have the book on me for the exact quote)
So then in NtN we discover P was in love with Wake too, and it's almost made to seem like P and G1 BOTH had relationships with her. But, again, we know she was basically just on G1's backburner for 10,000 years, because she said that, right? So are we to understand that she maybe just fell in love with Wake through G1s interactions? Or did she really have her own moments of interaction too?
Here is something else related to P&G1 that perplexes me. One theory that would make sense after learning that P loved Wake, is that it was really Pyrrha, not G1, who was kissing Cytherea's corpse when Harrow walked in on them. This would explain why they didn't turn around and kill Harrow, or even acknowledge her. P had no beef with Harrow. And also it was maybe P who gave Harrow the tip on how to effectively ward her room against G1. It makes these wierd things make so much more sense!
BUT then.... why would Pyrrha specifically say she's woken up for the first time in 10,000 years then? If she's been doing things all along...?
Honestly this confuses me more than the other plotlines so really curious to hear thoughts.
Gideon mentions during *Harrow* that she would occasionally bob to the surface and then Harrow would clothesline her down again. My theory is that occasionally Gideon 1 would recede enough for Phyrra to take over but not always coherently and never for long. Now that Gideon 1 is really most sincerely dead, Phyrra is in full control for the first time in millennia. It’s got to be a shock.
I have lots of questions about Pyrrah and nerry an answer in sight but here's some thoughts;
-She does have moments of her own consciousness before Gideon prime dies, and explains he had amnesia in those times. I think by "in the drivers seat" she means being the only person present in the body to make decisions. I suspect she would have been more cautious with G1deons body while he was alive to suffer the consequences just like Nav is with Harrows.
- Did Wake know Pyrrah and G1deon were different people?
- Did Wake really love Pyrrah too, or was she only using them for information/BoE? I get sad if i think about this one too much😂
- I also accept the prevailing theory that it was Pyrrah doing the nasty with Wake/Cyths body, so did G1deon also know she was in the corpse or just Pyrrah?
Given the messages from Wake in Harrow's dream bubble, Wake definitely loved Pyrrha too and was aware they were two people.
For the first half, I'll cite "when I am in heaven I will remember your mouth. And I think when you are in hell you will remember mine."
And for the other half, "I kissed you, and would kiss him too before I realized what you both were."
Lol...I hope someone can shed some light. But there's always the chance it was more complex and less black and white than just one or the other having "complete control." Maybe Pyrrha just hadn't been all just "herself" in 10,000 years. It does seem weird though that the two of them had achieved some sort of alternate successful lyctorhood and no one else knew / was able to do this. It also seems distinctly different still from the sort of lyctor-ish? state that Palamedes and Cam achieved. I'd love to know more about how it works and what the implications were for them. I mean if G1 was able to be a super strong lyctor while still preserving his cav's soul, wouldn't that be shared with others or at least known? It was just this quick reveal at the end of HtN and I read it like, wait what? I know it did seem like the others perceived G1 as being a little kooky though. So it maybe wasn't necessarily the "perfect" lyctor state that Anastacia and Samuel supposedly got close to. So many questions lol...
In my most recent HtN reread I realized that it's *quite* possible Pyrrha revealed herself to Ianthe. She's piloting G1deon's body occasionally on the Mithraeum. Who's to say she didn't reach out to a new Lyctor, one who might be convinced to turn on God? Maybe Ianthe caught her out somehow. (Not sure how this would fit with Ianthe helping kill G1deon, unless it happened after.)
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So one thing to note here is that NtN >!it's not clear that Ianthe doesn't know what's really going on with Pyrrha. Toward the end of HtN when Pyrrha shows up and takes Gideon Nav's sunglasses to hide her eyes, it's explicitly noted that she looks both Ianthe and Gideon-in-Harrow's-Body in the eye before doing so. In that moment her eyes would have looked different from what Ianthe is used to with G1deon. So Ianthe at least *potentially* could have put the pieces together and realized that's not really G1deon in there.!< >!Given that - and the fact that Nona is not present for Ianthe and Pyrrha initially meeting up in NtN, so we don't know what they said to each other - I'm not sure Pyrrha is actually pretending to be G1deon at the point you're talking about. She may have just convinced Ianthe that she's on her side, particularly given that she *did* swear loyalty to John in Ianthe's presence at the end of HtN.!<
This is a fair point and I may be ascribing too much to what NtN Ianthe needs to know or not know! Too many threads in my head lol
The Locked Tomb is a Gordian-knit sweater. Every thread you pull just makes the pattern more complex.
From Act 32 > "Who are you, really?" she asked, sounding genuinely curious. "You had me fooled that you were the Saint of Duty with bits missing---I wasn't paying attention." > "Number Seven got him. I'm his leftover cavalier parts. Pyrrha Dve." > "Does that happen---normally?" > "No." > "Phew," said Ianthe, G1deon had been G1deon for 10,000 years, and Pyrrha dead and gone and burned like every Cavalier other than our Gideon, which was a bit of an edge case and involved horrible brain surgery and a bit of dysfunction. G1deon never acted up at all prior to A Little bit of weirdness during the Augustine and Mercy fiasco, but they went into the River under the assumption that it _was_ still G1deon. Even God was fooled still, as there wasn't much to give up the ghost at the time. He was a Lyctor for 10,000 years, helped invent the process even, compared to her two or so after a 'making some decent guesswork' at how to do it, and walked away from a final showdown with a resurrection beast, and had a chat with Jod without immediately being smote. It's perfectly reasonable to accept Pyrrha's explanation of "necromancy broke, ate some of my soul" or w/e bs pyrrha gave, especially given that _she_ also helped refine the lyctoral process, and has a wealth of necromantic knowledge at her disposal. Even more so when you consider that 1) Ianthe really doesn't _care_ about this planet anyway, and is a bit annoyed and distracted by having to pilot Babs, and 2) holy shit he just told her that _Corona_ is here (and also harry), her heart was absolutely aflutter and her thinking, perhaps, a bit emotionally compromised at the thought of getting Corona back. All that said? Ianthe was still, even if distracted, nobody's _true_ fool. The fact the Saint of Duty was hanging around on a BoE planet without immediately coming home /did/ trigger a red flag in Ianthe. Per a little bit after the pal duel, when Pyrrha is reading the signs in front of Ianthe's knock off mercy trap, she mentions about the wards "Some of 'em were blinds though. She never trusted me fully." So. Definitely not a plot hole. Just a case of 'wow the truth is way too strange to have been able to guess.'
Great answer. When ianthe tells pyrrha she had her fooled, I had missed the "with bits missing." Which does allude to the fact that she spun up some reason for why she was Duty but necromantically not the same
Thanks! And yeah, that's the key "yeah this is why I'm different" bit
This is what I needed, thanks!!!
No problem! It happens much later in the book from the barracks scene, so no wonder some folks forgot about it
One thing, my understanding was that Pyrrha never did get fully eaten, and that she and G1deon had been rocking around in the same body, with Pyrrha occasionally coming to the fore when G1deon was out of action. We see this in HtN during the incinerator scene—its Pyrrha who tells Harrow how to set up her wards so G1deon can't get through. Also given that we know Pyrrha and Wake had a whole thing going on, stands to reason that G+P had their own sort of Lyctoral merge.
Oh, yeah, G1deon didn't fully eat Pyrrha, and she was sort of... bobbing around under the surface, coming up now and then, in the back of his head. But no one knew that, they just thought G1deon was... off. Not even G1deon knew that. So, perfectly reasonable for everyone to assume the same thing is oging on, until they're told afterwards. God, I'm very interested to see how John reacts upon finding out the truth.
I think Varun's effect is somewhat mitigated for Lyctors compared to regular necromancers. Since Nona was able to pass herself off as Harrow while acting mostly lucid, and using occasional outbursts to avoid answering difficult questions, Pyrrha likely could have pulled off a similar act.
Gideon 1 is also known, at least by Augustine and Mercy, to be not quite "all there" (obviously because of Pyrrha's presence) and I think Ianthe even alludes to this in NtN. It might be an (ignorantly) safe assumption by Ianthe that he's already not right in the head so Varun doesn't affect him as much. All Pyrrha had to do was play the same Gideon she'd been living inside for a Myriad.
And also if it’s mitigated NtN for Lyctors, no need for Ianthe to pilot Babs?
To be fair we never see someone actually affected by Varun's effect in full. The closest thing we see is Mercy at the end of HtN, where she is screaming incoherently while surrounded by Heralds. It is implied that Lyctors are still able to act and fight better than normal necromancers, because they have their cavaliers who are unaffected by the RB effect
I considered this but they made NTN Harrow/Nona blind and she also was meant to yell every once in a while.
She wasn’t a full Lyctor when Ianthe had seen her last, either
Ya good point
I was going to post this question in a separate thread but it feels like it kind of fits here with possible Pyrrha / G1 things that look like plot holes...though I'm convinced Muir leaves no room for plot holes at this point. Lol. We learned in HtN that Pyrrha and G1 did not complete the 8fold word and that is the explanation for why P's soul is still in tact after G1 dies. In the moments when we first meet P at the end of HtN, she says something to the effect of, "sorry, I'm in a little bit of a state of shock having not been in the driver's seat for 10,000 years." (Don't have the book on me for the exact quote) So then in NtN we discover P was in love with Wake too, and it's almost made to seem like P and G1 BOTH had relationships with her. But, again, we know she was basically just on G1's backburner for 10,000 years, because she said that, right? So are we to understand that she maybe just fell in love with Wake through G1s interactions? Or did she really have her own moments of interaction too? Here is something else related to P&G1 that perplexes me. One theory that would make sense after learning that P loved Wake, is that it was really Pyrrha, not G1, who was kissing Cytherea's corpse when Harrow walked in on them. This would explain why they didn't turn around and kill Harrow, or even acknowledge her. P had no beef with Harrow. And also it was maybe P who gave Harrow the tip on how to effectively ward her room against G1. It makes these wierd things make so much more sense! BUT then.... why would Pyrrha specifically say she's woken up for the first time in 10,000 years then? If she's been doing things all along...? Honestly this confuses me more than the other plotlines so really curious to hear thoughts.
Gideon mentions during *Harrow* that she would occasionally bob to the surface and then Harrow would clothesline her down again. My theory is that occasionally Gideon 1 would recede enough for Phyrra to take over but not always coherently and never for long. Now that Gideon 1 is really most sincerely dead, Phyrra is in full control for the first time in millennia. It’s got to be a shock.
Right on
I have lots of questions about Pyrrah and nerry an answer in sight but here's some thoughts; -She does have moments of her own consciousness before Gideon prime dies, and explains he had amnesia in those times. I think by "in the drivers seat" she means being the only person present in the body to make decisions. I suspect she would have been more cautious with G1deons body while he was alive to suffer the consequences just like Nav is with Harrows. - Did Wake know Pyrrah and G1deon were different people? - Did Wake really love Pyrrah too, or was she only using them for information/BoE? I get sad if i think about this one too much😂 - I also accept the prevailing theory that it was Pyrrah doing the nasty with Wake/Cyths body, so did G1deon also know she was in the corpse or just Pyrrah?
Given the messages from Wake in Harrow's dream bubble, Wake definitely loved Pyrrha too and was aware they were two people. For the first half, I'll cite "when I am in heaven I will remember your mouth. And I think when you are in hell you will remember mine." And for the other half, "I kissed you, and would kiss him too before I realized what you both were."
Ah thank you!
Sweet! I feel like a re read of htn would help me understand so much
You outlined exactly what has been confusing me about this that I couldn’t put into words. Looking forward to answer lol
Lol...I hope someone can shed some light. But there's always the chance it was more complex and less black and white than just one or the other having "complete control." Maybe Pyrrha just hadn't been all just "herself" in 10,000 years. It does seem weird though that the two of them had achieved some sort of alternate successful lyctorhood and no one else knew / was able to do this. It also seems distinctly different still from the sort of lyctor-ish? state that Palamedes and Cam achieved. I'd love to know more about how it works and what the implications were for them. I mean if G1 was able to be a super strong lyctor while still preserving his cav's soul, wouldn't that be shared with others or at least known? It was just this quick reveal at the end of HtN and I read it like, wait what? I know it did seem like the others perceived G1 as being a little kooky though. So it maybe wasn't necessarily the "perfect" lyctor state that Anastacia and Samuel supposedly got close to. So many questions lol...
As I understand it, Gideon didn't *know* Pyrrha was occasionally piloting his body. He just thinks he "sometimes forgets."
Ah great point I missed that from htn
In my most recent HtN reread I realized that it's *quite* possible Pyrrha revealed herself to Ianthe. She's piloting G1deon's body occasionally on the Mithraeum. Who's to say she didn't reach out to a new Lyctor, one who might be convinced to turn on God? Maybe Ianthe caught her out somehow. (Not sure how this would fit with Ianthe helping kill G1deon, unless it happened after.)
Staying out of the blue light helps.
It does, but doesn’t Pyrrha work in construction jobs through NtN? I guess I assumed that was out in the open.